Get Over It

Okay. My head has been a mess for the last four years. My life went to hell on September 10, 2001. And not because somebody knocked down a couple of buildings. I had my OWN grief to deal with, thank you.

2005 was a fricking snake-pit. Not that anything really BAD happened, butt it was like fighting dumpsters full of samurai toads all year. You know what 2005 was like, for everybody, starting boxing day, with the various earth-dances - tsunami and hurricane and earthquakes. And the way my year kicked me around and didn't even kill anything, I'm amazed the planet-boogie people even managed to stay on this side of the madhouse wall. I don't even know how I got any books done, when all I wanted to do was either lie in bed with a pillow over my head or go down to the beach and gut fish.

Well, yes I do. It was with the help and support of a lot of really decent and unbelievably giving people, some of 'em with a lot of ready money. They're really private people, so I'm not naming names, but I am doing public witch-burnings of gratitude. It takes a cat eight years to get over grief or trauma – it takes a human an average about four. Been there, done that.

I have a new year's resolution: I WILL NOT OBSESS ABOUT ANYTHING.

Stop laughing. I mean it. I have three new rules for life and they seem to be working:

You'll always make the wrong decision anyway, so just MAKE it and deal with the consequences.
You have to know when to quit.
Nobody can corner you as long as you have a loaded pistol and your mouth opens.

Yeah, I know, there are a lot of you that are going to say that that is just more pessimism. But damnit, my patron goddess is Kali. Right here I'm declaring freedom of information for those of us who have a black view of life and still use it as a form of power and growth. Next time you're revving your pessimism jets and some pink-and-light blue Happy Serf tells you to cheer up, remember – Grant was depressed and had migraines and he still won all the battles that counted (that's General Grant, one of the generals in the American Civil War, and don't get all insulted because that seems obvious, because this is an international website and I don't expect everybody to have attended an American history course).

So here's what's good so far: I just rebuilt my website using that funky little 5-page system from GoDaddy. Maybe I'm not a hot-shot web-builder yet, but at least mine is up-to-date at last and no longer huge and messy (I have readers that have grouched, "What's WRONG with huge and messy?").

I'm going to take major advantage of Joey Manley's Webcomicsnation to preview my work on the net. I've just signed an agent.

I'll be publishing collections of all that out-of-print work, and training an intern while I'm at it.

Since I'm an ArtWitch and everything I draw affects me and everybody else according to the story lines, from now on I'm doing less blood and howling and a LOT more gold and sugar. For everybody. And I'm going to be doing a lot more sharing. As follows:

Barnes and Noble has a neat new program – direct UPS order! If you're a vendor, you should be getting a notice that they'll send you a customer's order and you can ship it directly into the customer's eager little hands. According to my vendor contact, you can hand the labeled package to any passing Brownbutt and the package will make it. If you're a customer, check out Barnes and Noble and see if they've got it up soon.

Diamond is not completely refusing to look at print-on-demand possibilities. BooksurgeDirect are having meetings to make it easier for direct-market distributors and their publishers to link directly to POD printers. I'd like to thank and compliment Diamond for being so forthcoming in the process.

Things will be good this year. So there. For everybody. It better be – 2007 will be worse than 2005. I've known about 2005 and 2007 for about 8 years (Don't ask me how. I just do). 2006 I have no clue about – so I'm going to get as much good out of it as possible before the Big One shows up next New Year's. I advise you to do the same.

I'm not getting rid of my grief – that's just disrespect -- but I'm putting it in a little room with a bowl of milk and a warm blankie where it can stay out from under my feet and eat fish cakes. I'll visit it at night and read it my new comic books.